A Perfect Sacrifice
by countess z
Summary: After the Greymarch, the Hero of Kvatch lost herself in the throes of insanity when she took the mantle of Madgod. Much later, a hero from another time intervenes to salvage what is left of her: a soulless entity, stripped of madness and nearly everything else. Yet soon she discovers that the one who saved her is possibly even madder than she had ever been...


**A/N: Iseus Maro is a character belonging to author maximsk and is being used here with his permission (happy belated birthday)! For context, this one-shot might make slightly more sense if you have read his Currents of Time series (MAJOR spoilers ahoy for CoT and TOT; proceed with caution), but I'd recommend that you read his writing anyways because it is absolutely brilliant.**

* * *

 **New Sheoth Palace**

"What are you feeling right now?" The voice asked.

"Nothing. Perhaps I am falling. Or flying."

"Free?"

"Maybe."

The entity then realized it had taken the form of a butterfly. If it desired, it could take any physical form it knew of. But in this moment it was a butterfly, listening to a familiar voice.

Once, the entity had attached an arbitrary name and gender to itself. Concepts irrelevant to its present incarnation. During its mortal lifetime, it was known as Mona. That woman, Mona, as defined by names and titles given by others. The Hero of Kvatch. The Savior of Bruma. The Champion of Cyrodiil. The Duchess of Mania.

 _Madgod._

Memories remained. Yet they were of no more importance to the butterfly than a stage play. The life of a failed hero in two acts.

Again, the voice broke the silence.

"Do you know where we are?"

This voice was the one that had scraped away the very essence of the butterfly's existence. But the entity felt neither bitterness nor hatred. It felt nothing. It merely _was_.

"Shivering Isles. The Madgod's Palace," the butterfly responded.

"Do you know what you are?" asked the voice.

"Do _you_?"

"Do I what?"

"Know what you are."

"Yes. I'm a person. My name's Iseus."

"Iseus. You choose to retain a mortal's former identity?"

"Why not?"

Now, the entity could see the unremarkable physical form this Iseus had chosen for himself. The butterfly fluttered close to his head. A male Imperial, dark hair and dark eyes. Other mortals may have found him attractive, but it could only see an indulgence of the false identity he had lost.

"The color of your soul no longer validates it. You have seen the illusion of truth, as I have. Your existence is a lie," the entity said in response to his question.

"Of course it is. Everything's a lie. But why does that have to keep us from enjoying it?"

What simple, _mortal_ logic. And yet...

"Such was the Madgod's rationale for existing," the entity mused, still floating near Iseus. The man held an index finger out, and the butterfly landed on it.

"But you must have some rationale as well. After all, you've made the choice to stay here with me so far," Iseus said.

 _Choice_. An interesting word for him to use. Sentience was a prerequisite to choice. Every decision had a reason, no matter how subjectively petty or inconsequential others perceived it as. There was no such thing as a thoughtless decision, though there were many careless decisions. The mortal known as Mona was testament to this.

Yes, if it so desired, the entity could cease to exist. It was an odd thing, how mortals feared death. More than all the pain and suffering imaginable there was nothing more terrifying to them than the dreamless sleep of nonexistence. But to an immortal, it was not about life or death, but the point when they chose to accept that the concept of "I" was an indulgent frivolity. Yet the entity was still here.

"I do not know why I should exist."

"But can you tell me why you _shouldn't_ exist?"

"No," the butterfly admitted, its wings now gray and patternless.

"Let's take a walk," Iseus said.

Apparently, he meant that literally, for he began to walk forward, with the butterfly still on his hand.

"Where are we going?" the entity asked, but what it really wanted to know was why they were traveling manually and not appearing in the point in space where they desired.

"Nowhere in particular. I want to see the rest of the realm that you've helped to shape."

"There is nothing of my _present_ existence in this realm. You confuse me with my past selves."

"Are you sure?"

"Have you proof of the contrary?"

Everything was white for a moment, and then they were outside. Somewhere in Dementia, where the marbled sky was a moldy, weeping green. It might have been mid-day but everything was dark as dusk in Dementia.

They were just outside of New Sheoth, at the crumbling gates of the mist-shrouded cemetery. Weathered tombstones jutted out like giant's fingertips, most of them crooked or fallen. Once, in Sheogorath's previous incarnation, this area had been tidy and well-maintained, but now weeds grew higher than the gravestones and there were faded signs with illustrated depictions of all sorts of punishments that would befall the poor adventurer that ventured further. Death by defenestration into a pit of a thousand nesting geese. Death by defenestration into a pool of caliper-fish. Death by defenestration into an active volcano of molten cheese. Tossing people out of windows had been an important part of Sheogorath's idea of criminal justice, apparently.

Yet there was something particularly disturbing about this place...

Sheogorath had feared it. Hated it. If anyone even dared to _speak_ of it, he would cut out their tongue and serve it to them on a plate with white truffle sauce. And then he'd throw them out of a window.

Even now, the entity felt traces of something close to dread.

When the mortal servant mantled the Madgod, her memories had unconsciously altered parts of the landscape of the Shivering Isles. It was only natural, for the Isles were a manifestation of Sheogorath's psyche. She had attempted to bury something terrible in this part of her mind, and it had remained even when her identity had assimilated with a Daedric Prince. Yet Iseus strode through, unfazed by all the threats of defenestration, over gnarled black roots and through thorny vines as he walked the entity through the cemetery. An undead beast resembling a flayed hound growled and leaped at Iseus, but just as the dog's skeletal jaw creaked open, attempting to take a bite out of the man's head with razor-sharp teeth, it simply vanished, with a tiny _pop_.

Other skeletal amalgamations, the cobbled-together bones of various beasts began to climb out of a mass grave, shambling towards him. More of Sheogorath's defenses. Some were large as mammoths, but they were still no match. One by one they all vanished, again with that inane popping. Was that noise even necessary?

Eventually, they emerged from the shaded canopy of trees and into a grassy clearing. A lone circular building stood in the center of it all, absolutely pristine, untouched by the overgrowth of its bleak surroundings.

It was an impressive structure built of brilliant white stone, shimmering despite the lack of sunlight. Massive columns reached out as high as the domed ceiling. Its entrance was a humble wooden door, with rivets arranged in the shape of a diamond with the Imperial dragon symbol painted over.

In Cyrodiil, this place was known as the Temple of the One.

Mona knew it as the place where she had lost something very important.

As the entity recalled that night with absolute clarity, the ambiance around them changed. The sky above became cracked and blood-red. A heavy rumble – like thunder, except constant and earth-trembling – sounded.

 _Now I must go. The Dragon waits._

Mortal memory was faulty, and faces easy to forget over time, but she would always remember him. She remembered Martin's pale eyes and disarming smile. She remembered how it felt like nothing bad would ever happen to her when she was with him, how she didn't care for anything so long as he was safe. The time she had known him had been achingly short; two days shy of four months. But during that time he had taught her so many things, and she had grown to love him dearly, when his relentlessly polite exterior lowered, revealing a deeply insecure man haunted both by prophetic visions of the future and nightmares of his dark past. Perhaps she was the only one who realized that Martin carried a heavy guilt with him, for he hid it so well under a shield of affability and unhesitating kindness, wanting only to help anyone who was in need. Anyone except himself.

Their first moments together had also been at a holy place of Akatosh:

"Yes, I'm a priest. Do you need a _priest?"_ he had practically spat at her in the besieged chapel at Kvatch, after spending the last two days watching the rest of the city burn to the ground, unable to do anything else about it.

And then their final moment, in the Temple of the One, Mona felt keenly her own uselessness as she was forced to watch Martin's body torn apart by beams of light before her eyes so that Akatosh could wear his mortal vessel as a glove to be discarded.

The entity was no longer a butterfly. Mona had suddenly found herself on her knees, pulling clumps of grass out of the muddy ground with her hands. Familiar, dark-skinned hands with flesh over bone even though it was all a lie. Pain – not the physical kind, she was beyond that even in this physical form – she felt again a yawning, crushing emptiness that she thought she'd never have to feel again.

And when it became too much to bear all at once, she did disappear inside of herself.

Mona was a young Redguard girl in Stros M'Kai, and she'd lived here all her life. Maybe she was seven. But she told people that she was eight, because it _sounded_ a lot older than seven. Her hair was done in two thick, curly little puffs atop her head tied neatly in place with ribbons. The sky was a perfect blue and she was barefoot at the beach, standing in the warm shallows. She might have looked a bit silly with her bloomers bunched up in her tiny hands, but if she got them wet she would get in trouble. The longer she stood the deeper the sand buried her feet. Maybe if she stood here long enough she would vanish. That would be nice, and she wouldn't have to sit still and be quiet so that the grown-ups could talk about boring things. Maybe if she stood in the water long enough she could become a nereid and live in the ocean with the fish and the mudcrabs. She had already been here so long that the kingfishers were not afraid of her anymore. How nice it might be, to be a creature of the sea. That sounded like a poem. She'd have to remember to write that-

" _MONA!"_

The girl jumped. That was the shrill cry of Janeel, her governess. Mona scowled. She was still smarting from the last time her father found out that she skipped her geography lesson to look for cowries. If she waited out here any longer she would get in trouble again. But instead of slipping into her sandals and rushing back to the villa, Mona quickly shimmied up the trunk of a coconut palm and hid beneath its fronds.

That was when she saw _him._ Some Imperial. He wasn't supposed to be here, and now he was going to ruin everything!

"Go away," she hissed. "Don't let them know I'm here!"

"You know, your hair looks really cute like that," he called out to her, standing directly under the palm tree.

Mona glowered at him. She thought it looked dumb, like two cream puffs on her head, but Saffira wouldn't let her eat until she stopped fussing and let her clean her and dress her hair.

"Stop talking to me. They'll see you. And if they see you, they'll see me!"

"They won't. Because they're not the ones you're really hiding from."

The Redguard girl frowned. This Imperial wasn't making any sense. And he was getting sand all over his nice boots.

"You're a crazy man. I'll tell my father's guards you're here and they'll take you away," she warned. Maybe he didn't know that her father was an important person.

"Yes, I'm sure they'd try. Do you remember me?"

Maybe she did, but she was struggling to forget. Because she did know that if she remembered him then everything would be ruined.

The tree faded as the illusion fell apart, and the balmy tropical breeze turned into an icy chill and then she was falling – but not for long.

Iseus caught her. Everything turned black with another _pop_.

She was floating – it felt as if she were swimming without water. Stars. She could see an endless blanket of twinkling pinpricks of light against the swirling blackness that enveloped her. It was warm and silent, terrifyingly silent. After a moment she heard a light, barely-detectable oscillation, and realized it was the wheel – the very Aurbis – turning.

"Hello?" she called out, startled by her voice. A deep, adult voice. Mona's voice. She was starting to remember now.

"Hi, Mona. I'm right here," Iseus reassured her. It filled her with a certain serenity and she could easily remain here another hazy century or two.

"How long are you going to stay?" she asked.

"As long as you need me to."

"What if that's a long time?"

She heard him laugh – rather, she felt him laugh. It was difficult to describe, but she felt his presence wholly and definitively.

"I've got time."

Mona paused. The pause might have lasted several minutes or several days. And then she spoke again.

"Why did you bring me here? Not – not here, as in out here. I mean... why did you decide to spare me, and destroy Sheogorath? Why go through the trouble of separating the two?"

"I looked inside of him, and I saw you," he said simply, as if this were the only explanation needed.

"But – it couldn't have been because of _me_ alone. You must have some greater purpose intended for me, some master plan that I could be a part of."

"Oh, nothing like that. I just liked you."

"For an immortal being, that sounds a little childish."

"Would you rather have me wanting to manipulate you?"

"I don't know. It'd make you easier to understand."

"Hey, wasn't there somewhere else you wanted to go?"

"Well, there was this one place..."

And as she thought of it, they were there. Sitting in a cave beneath the sea-cliffs, hearing the steady roar of the waves. She'd gone here many times, a lifetime ago, so it felt. When she was still Mona. The vivid colors and mushroom trees were a telltale sign that they were somewhere in Mania, the bright water glimmering against a sky of pastel-pink clouds and swirling lights. In the distance they could see the broken towers of a ruined castle on an island.

It felt strange, to choose to take the form of her mortal self again. But here she was, as a young Redguard woman with cropped hair. Just as she had once appeared centuries ago. She was even still wearing the white tabard of Kvatch over her chainmail. And Iseus was there with her, sitting right beside her.

"How did you know this was the place?" she asked.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I know a lot about you."

"Oh. That's right."

Mona remembered very little of the process, when he had restored her to this form, but he must have seen her entire lifetime of memories before him. In a way, it made her feel naked. Vulnerable. She hugged her legs close to her chest.

"This was the only place where you could think," he added.

Mona laughed.

"The only place I could get away from all the crazy, you mean. Sometimes I'd summon Haskill here just to talk to him. I don't know where he is, now."

"You freed him."

"I guess I would do a thing like that."

She looked at Iseus. Not at his physical form; such contrivances were arbitrary, but at his soul. He had once been a mortal, with flesh and blood, just as she had been. But now he was something entirely different. Something closer to a Daedra than a human. Yet he retained his self-concept with apparent ease, when he must have known it was another lie.

"How did you become like this? Who were you, before all of... _this_ , _"_ she asked suddenly, making a vague twirling gesture with her hand.

Iseus leaned back.

"Mm? You mean, from the start? That's... a long story."

"I've got time."

That elicited a laugh from Iseus. From where he was laying on the ground he stretched his arms up, staring at his hands.

"Here. Let me give you some context first. This is what's been happening in the Fourth Era so far."

Mona nodded, allowing him to enter her mind. Images flashed before her eyes, of the Tamriel she left behind, after she had lost herself in the Shivering Isles. As soon as the history was displayed to her she found herself making connections, which led to predictions based on logical assumptions to a terrifying degree of accuracy. She saw the growing shadow of the Thalmor cast over the fractured Empire, and predicted the assassination of Potentate Ocato, who would have been the only one able to keep the Empire together long enough to stamp out the rising threat. But the Thalmor had known this too, and extinguished him quietly before he could do anything. She was shown the volcanic eruption that decimated Morrowind, and knew the Empire would fail to intervene when the Argonians saw a weakness they could exploit. And so they lost the support of an entire race. When he showed her the Colovian warlord rising to seize the Ruby Throne, she already knew that the remaining Elder Council and general public would never support him, which only weakened the Empire's grasp on the provinces. Then, war came suddenly, but not unexpectedly. The Thalmor scorched their way through her native Hammerfell and marched into Cyrodiil. There was so much fire, and so much death.

"For what did Martin sacrifice himself?" Mona asked once the images faded. It seemed now that all she and Martin had accomplished was the delay of an inevitable cataclysm, if not by the Daedra but by the Thalmor.

Somehow – she did not know why – but she understood precisely what would happen next, in great detail. Perhaps part of the Madgod – or the part of the Madgod that still had Jyggalag's foresight – had been preserved. Even her voice sounded different. It had become deeper, resounding as she explained her prognosis to Iseus.

"I know how this will end. The Empire will be forced to surrender to the Aldmeri Dominion, conceding with humiliating terms that their two remaining territories of any strategic significance – Hammerfell and Skyrim – will find offensive. Hammerfell will never agree to their concessions, and alone they may be able to route the Aldmeri invaders long enough, because it will be the first time the Crowns and the Forebears will be able to band together, united by their hatred for the Empire that betrayed them. But Skyrim is a different story. The region will be torn apart – not by the Thalmor invaders but by their own civil war, between separatists and loyalists. The separatists will ultimately win that war, but it was what the Thalmor wanted the entire time. Still plagued by in-fighting, without the Legion's protection, the Dominion will slaughter them. Hammerfell will fall, too, once the Thalmor are free to allocate more resources to the province they previously underestimated. Elven supremacy will be established as the new world order, but any semblance of true order will be purged from Tamriel entirely."

"Not bad," Iseus said. "You got most of it right up until the civil war in Skyrim. But that's because you left out one factor."

"What?"

"Me."

He took both of her hands and she was submerged into a sea of new images with the watercolor-quality of distant memories. The long-forgotten faces of his parents were blurry and featureless, but there was a boy who was sharply focused, and based on infinitesimal variables that even Iseus was not aware of, Mona knew immediately that prophecy preceded that child. He would become one of the greatest heroes of the Fourth Era, as foretold by the Elder Scrolls. But it confused her all the same. The boy looked more like a Redguard than an Imperial. He was definitely not Iseus. This boy, she soon gathered from contextual clues, was his older brother. They were all outside, in the Talos Plaza district of the Imperial City. There was some nostalgic, nebulous hint of happiness in this moment, like the afterimage of light that remained after shutting one's eyes, but just as fleeting. The Imperial City, more beautiful than she had remembered it. Mona could see the walls and buildings made of the same opalescent stone as the Temple of the One, and at the center of everything the White-Gold tower glistened in the sunlight, as high as anyone could see. But then, the perfect cloudless sky turned red. Just as she had remembered on that night... the Imperial Palace was burning and the nights would always sound of steel and shouting. Marching. Relentless marching. And death, too much death in the vivid, horrible way a young child would perceive it. The invading soldiers would pile up the bodies and blood would ooze down the streets through the storm drains. Screams and chaos and confusion muddled the memory. She was living her own nightmare of the siege of the Imperial City all over again but it just kept going. Martin would not show up to save everyone this time. Again, she wondered, and this disturbed her greatly – _what had Martin sacrificed himself for?_

Suddenly, Iseus pulled away, and they were in the cove again, listening to the gentle waves lapping against the sea-cliffs. It was as if she had just resurfaced from being deep beneath the ocean, taking her first sputtering, life-saving breath after nearly drowning. Mona realized that he was laying beside her.

"I'm sorry. We don't have to go back to the City," Iseus said. They were both laying there, facing each other, whispering like schoolchildren exchanging secrets.

"So... this is the life you were thrust into. You don't even remember them, your parents. You were orphaned that day, when the Thalmor took the city. And then it was just you and your brother. It would have been difficult just to survive in the aftermath of that," she said, wondering if she sounded a bit too blunt about it all. But it was far easier right now for her to view it all with a level of detachment.

"Yeah. It wasn't as bad as it might have been, though. For me at least. My brother – you saw him, his name's Kamian – he made sure of that. But I just needed you to understand what I had to see every day. One of my first clear memories was of a boy slitting another kid's throat in the Market District for squatting in his alley. It was in the middle of the day, too. I remember thinking it looked like he was wearing-"

"A crimson choker," Mona whispered at the same time Iseus finished the sentence. Slowly, her mind was beginning to make the connections. But she was not able to say anything. It already felt as if she were walking on a thin layer of ice that had formed over a lake.

"Yeah. My brother took the worst of it all so that I wouldn't have to, but I still lived it. And... I'd see this suffering all around me, and, well, I'd _know_ that it didn't have to be like that, but I couldn't do anything about it unless I became better. Stronger. I mean, how could I help anyone else when Kamian had to fight the other kids on my behalf? As I got older, I kept finding ways to improve myself, so that I could improve the lives of the people around me. Sometimes, that meant violence. At least where the Thalmor were concerned. I... I really didn't like having to hurt people. Even if someone attacked me first, I didn't want to hurt them badly, because I knew they were already suffering, and I would have rather helped them. Anyway, I first killed someone in cold blood when I was fourteen."

That last line was blurted out so casually, as if he could nonchalantly just take a life like that. And the way he worded it, made it seem as if he had killed more people before that.

"As opposed to... the first time you killed someone, _not_ in cold blood?" Mona ventured.

"I don't know. How am I supposed to know that? It's not that easy to stay and check to see if someone's still breathing after they lose a fight in the street."

Mona didn't say anything else.

Iseus looked at her fixedly for a moment, and reached out to stroke her cheek with his thumb.

He continued.

"That winter, there wasn't enough food to go around – well, less than usual. Instead of chasing after the kids who were stealing from us, I wanted to look for the cause of the problem. The reason why we had to fight each other in the streets – kill each other, yes, just for a loaf of bread. So I spoke to the farmers, and they admitted that the Dominion was terrorizing them into giving up most of their crop to feed their armies. So what I did was, I killed the quartermaster that was going around doing the terrorizing, but they just replaced her with someone even worse, someone who managed to coerce the Council into _mandating_ their right to requisition. That's when I knew there was no way I could stop what was happening unless I stopped _them._ But I wasn't powerful enough the way I was."

The realization dawned on Mona with a sudden rushing coldness. It was as if she had just fallen through the ice she was walking over. She could already see where his mindset would lead him.

"Martin told me that people traffic with Daedra because no one else can make them a better offer," she said numbly.

"Absolutely. But we're skipping too far ahead already. Let's go back to my brother for a moment. I'm sure you're still curious about him."

As he took her hands again images of sleepy, snowy Bruma flooded her mind. The city itself looked much the same as she had remembered it, though the Great Chapel of Talos had been re-purposed into the Temple of the Eight. They even painted over Talos' stained glass panel.

The brothers were much older, now mercenaries in the midst of young adulthood. So much flashed before Mona's eyes instantaneously, but she was able to process all of the information just as rapidly as he presented it to her.

In public, their names were different. Kamian had little choice over his own title, for his sleek suit of ebony plate was all that anyone saw of him. Thus, he was easily dubbed the Ebony Warrior.

She saw that when Iseus wasn't working, he busied himself with something else, as long as it was something that could effectively make him _better_. Books would just pile up at their house and were studied into the small hours of the night by the light of a candlelight spell, from standard textbooks on alchemy and enchanting to obscure, speculative texts on topics that Mona didn't even know existed when she was that age, like object transmutation and soul transfiguration. His brother immersed himself in these studies as well, but not with nearly the same obsessive drive as Iseus possessed. There was hardly enough time for eating or sleeping, and sometimes he neglected both. While countless admired the handsome, dark Imperial from afar, and some would even get close enough for them to become lovers, his partners would leave for the same reasons. He simply couldn't maintain a proper relationship because he wasn't allowed to spend time for himself. His method of operation did not take into consideration his own happiness-

"You know, I spent a long time in Bruma. All those times I walked past the statue of you at the north gate, I never thought I'd get to see you in color. It's nice," Iseus mused, interrupting his own stream of memories just to make that remark.

"Something to write home about," Mona replied dryly. But the statue built to honor the Savior of Bruma was the last thing she wanted to discuss right now.

The next memory he showed her was still in Bruma, during the quiet, early hours of the morning. Kamian effortlessly carried a huge, heavy sack over his shoulder. They were walking towards the north gate, which was still guarded by Mona's statue, lifting a sword skyward to pierce the breaking dawn.

A thin layer of snow already dusted the streets and their boots were making fresh prints.

"I mean... you'll hardly even know I'm gone," Kamian was saying. Fully clad in the black armor as always, towering and impassive.

They both stopped at the gate. Kamian finally pulled his helmet off, which was a rare thing. He was so much darker than Iseus, they looked hardly related.

"I'll miss you," Iseus said.

"Dammit. I knew you'd say that."

They embraced, quickly. Still, it did little to ease the obvious tension. Something wasn't right. Kamian had a contract up north, in Skyrim. It was supposed to be like any other job, only further away. Sometimes they had to travel all over Cyrodiil, and it was nothing. But somehow, this time it felt different. Even Iseus didn't seem to know. Mona could tell that this would be the last time he would see his brother for a long time.

"Oh. Right. I found this yesterday. I know you collect them."

He handed Iseus some shimmering bluish-green weed. A nirnroot. They had to be near extinction in Cyrodiil by now.

"I study them. But thanks. You should probably leave before the sun comes up," Iseus said with deliberate coolness.

Mona started to speak. "Then he is the Last Dragonborn?"

"Well, he was supposed to be the one. It's true. But just... everything that you can foresee, with Kamian fulfilling the prophecy, imagine my face there instead."

"But he's so much taller-"

"Okay, my body was there too. And my mind, and my soul and everything. Just put me there instead of him."

Mona frowned. That still wasn't quite how it went. "You would not have followed the prophecy strictly as laid out by the Elder Scroll. Not even close."

"So I took a shortcut."

"That's putting it lightly."

But when she saw the next stream of memories, with Iseus following Kamian to Skyrim and ending up tangled in its political mess, she understood that defeating Alduin was not his only goal. Between perfecting his mastery of the Voice and venturing deep within ancient crypts, he was making plans to build an army in the subterranean ruins of Blackreach, and had meetings with a garden of eyes.

He read the Oghma Infinium, that horrible book stitched from the flesh of elves, its pages spiraling into infinity. A cold wind of insight chilled through him, but he stared at Herma-Mora and asked for more.

The garden of eyes stared back.

 _YOU_

Black dripping tentacles lashed out, wrapping around his body. Mona could _feel_ it and she couldn't move, couldn't scream out in pain. They were in a realm of sickly green and walls of forgotten books.

 _A̱͎͓̖̘͇͞R͏̥̗̻̤̱̼̱E̵͓_

She was feeling it as Iseus had felt it. Paralyzed, helpless. The tentacles squeezed tighter until ink poured out of her ears, her mouth, every orifice.

 _A͉̖̗̜N̼̥͙͉̭̲͈ ̼̻͚̘͎̘I̴̠̱̣LḼ̛̜̗U̼̜͈͢S͇̺͢I̦̮̭̪̹O͖̗̺Ṋ̡͍_

Thoughts were being re-organized, categorized. An entire lifetime of memories sorted as irrelevant. The essence of his being was irrelevant. Her mind – his mind gnawed on by fat green worms. Couldn't move, couldn't scream. He was being invalidated. His soul expunged.

 _E͔̰P͕̥͝H̢̠̗̜͇̻̥͞ͅḚ̝̝̼̥M̛͏̲̠̖E̶̛͓̘Ŕ̮͚̝̗͟͟A̘L͓̗̼̹̫͟.̷̘͔̻̹̮̝͙͎ ̨̼̲̤͎̼͖̫N͎̠̞̱Ú̦̘̺̼̠͞L͓L̶̺.̭̖̫̘̗͍_

A resounding screech, the manic laughter of seven generations of champions, the grotesque garbling, sloshing sound of Seekers all around as they communicated to each other.

 _À̧҉̤̟͔̥̘̠̫̥ ͈̬̦̻̙̹́̕͝C͏̙̰̮̰̗H̶̸̩͎̮̲̳̝͕̲Ó͎̯̹̬̗I͏̩̘̙̖͞R̻̼̙̘̰̳̘͡ ̗͔̺̺̠͢O̴̫̲̜F͎̟͍̳̘̥̼ ҉̳̲̰̻̬̪̼N̴̠͔̟Ò̰̘̺N̢҉̡̪̹̖̺͖̝̬̯̻S̱͈̲E̗̱̲̝N̖̺̘̖̜̻̥S͈E̸̜̟̞̥͚͢ ̧̖͇͎̯_

And then she felt him being pulled apart by the truth or _un_ truth of reality – as if his body were made of soft dough – pulled apart and then kneaded into a ball as the tentacles reshaped him, and then pulled apart again and the process repeated.

 _O̡͏̼̣͇̜̼N͏҉͇̞ ̵̭T̢͓̙̤̭͘̕H͢͏̷͎͙̥̘̱̩E̙̲̙̮̭͓̭͕ͅ ҉̣̻͓͕͚̠̻͠P̨̛̩̮͖̜ͅR͘͏̠E͓̩̤̭̘̗̬̲C̢͍͚̝̭̱͔I̸̮̣̞͕̞̟͘͞ͅP̶̨̳͚͚͕͓̣͖̯̠I̵̡̬͈͜C̣̬̪͢Ḙ̶͎͕̥̣ ̶̷͍̮̣̱̰O̷͙͚̗̖͇̠͕̱͡͠F̥͔̫̫͔̰̫͠ ̡̫̝̞̮̖̮̜͉͢͟Y͙̙̺̣̙̘̲̬Ó̫͔͔̣̙͖̟͡U͏͙̮̳̞͍͜R̢̭͚̥̥̹ ̸̶̢͚̥̻͎̳͕̪͓D͏̮͖͔̬͘E̳͚͚Ĺ̴̬̳̦̖Ų̛͎̙̭̠͕͠D̛͉͖̲̭͓̼̟E̡̞̦̗̻̫͟͞D̛̦͚̫̹̻̼͔ ̵̧̧̰͎̮͙R̡̫̭̻̱̯͎̦͘͡E̸̛̮͓̮̘̤̫̺̜͝A̪̺̞L̬͈̬͚̬͉ͅI̸̵̭͇̮̤̝̭̰͍T̶̷͏͍̪̭̰͍̪̙̩Y̷̶̶̙͓͔.͏̧͈̬_

And then – silence.

Mona thought she heard distant ocean waves again but everything was dark.

"Why..." she mumbled, pulling herself upright. She was standing now, speaking into the darkness.

"Why would you _choose_ this?"

But Iseus merely said "It seemed like a good idea." She should have already predicted that.

"You – obviously, you didn't even know that it would turn out this way. This was even before you knew this would lead to your Aetherial accession. Before you even _knew_ about the mask." Mona was struggling to understand his reasoning.

"Clearly not. If I had known, he would have erased my puny mortal self right there." He snapped his fingers for effect.

"You would just discard your identity, on the off-chance that it might be useful to you one day? _"_

Mona's vision was beginning to clear. Now it was nighttime in Mania, and the sky was an indigo fabric of purple nebulae and multicolored stars.

"Look," he said. "If there was any chance – any chance at all that it might have helped, there's no way I could have lived with myself if I hadn't done it. I needed to transcend my mortal limitations. I wanted to go beyond what I was capable of – what I was capable of doing wasn't enough. I couldn't help enough people that way. If I hadn't done it, everyone would be dead and you would still be insane."

Mona was silenced by that last remark, and felt it like a dagger. She stared at him, _through_ him, the being that had reformed his own identity out of nothing. Mona had two centuries to have the truth displayed to her, for her identity to be scraped away. And she had _still_ gone insane. Iseus did this all in what amounted to seconds of Mundial time.

"But – to go through a process like that, you're forsaking your identity, your individuality, the very essence that makes you a person. You turn yourself into – into an efficiency automaton – how can you possibly have empathy for others if you can't even consider your own happiness? And then you – you're able to measure other people, quantify them, all to accomplish your master plan, that's how Daedra think, that's -"

"Why I don't have a black soul."

"But it's not normal! It's not healthy. You're unlike _any_ rational person. What's _wrong_ with you? Why would you do this to yourself? You can't possibly save everyone-"

"I got close enough."

"But you didn't save _everyone_. That is fundamentally impossible. You saved as many people as you logically could, which was already far beyond what was logically possible, based on your own personal idea of consequence. Objectively, you made the world a better place for a large majority of the population – for a time. But you're already weakened by the Oblivion Purge. What's going to happen when Alduin returns and alters the passage of time? What's going to happen when the An-Xileel use the power of the Hist to overthrow the provisional government in Morrowind and conquer all of eastern Tamriel? What's going to happen when the Magna Ge blacken the sky and terrorize Mundus with their astral doom-prophecies? What are you going to do, then? Won't your sacrifice be nothing but a delay of the inevitable... like Martin's?"

"No. I planned for this. I've left a legacy behind on Mundus. Blackreach was just the beginning-"

"Don't you know you were a pawn, manipulated to accomplish some higher plan?" she blurted, unable to maintain any semblance of tactfulness. "Like I was? Like _Martin_ was? You were _designed_ to be like this. You were meant to make that sacrifice – the concept of your own free will was another illusion. Don't you understand that?"

"Of course."

Iseus said this with the same casual surety, without a trace of anger or bitterness. He would have made the same choices over again if given another chance.

"I'm aware of the one pulling the strings," he added. "You seem to be aware of him, too. Some ambitious Psijic or such, who decided to defy prophecy to create a second Dragonborn who would be even better at saving the world. But it doesn't make a difference to me. I've always been a slave to my conscience; it doesn't change much if I know it was by design. I'm here because no one else would do this. Because no one else _should_ make that sacrifice."

Mona shook her head. It was wrong. One person should not have to bear the burden of every single inhabitant of the entire Mundial plane.

She took a deep breath, and stared out at the imaginary night sky of Sheogorath's realm.

No. _Her_ realm. The Shivering Isles was still her demesne... her soul was gone, and the very marrow of her being had changed. But that fact had not.

Something was happening – again, her form was shifting. She grew taller – spined, silvery plates secured into place over her entire body. But it wasn't that she was simply armoring herself – she was _becoming_ the armor. Spikes jutted out of the pauldrons, and her face became an inscrutable metal mask beneath a silver helm, pronged like the tines of a fork.

This was the beginning of the third act.

"It is your time for respite," Jyggalag said, his voice thunderous and multifaceted. "For it is my turn now."

This was who he chose to be in this very moment. He was the Daedric Prince of Order, and he could see the infinite possibilities of truth reduced to a set of choice and consequence.

* * *

*The Zalgo text reads: "YOU ARE AN ILLUSION. EPHEMERAL. NULL. A CHOIR OF NONSENSE ON THE PRECIPICE OF YOUR DELUDED REALITY."


End file.
